Good As New
by bunnikkila
Summary: Hiro isn't the only one with a lot to come to terms with. A companion to Fair - you don't need to read one to understand the other, though one skimmed scene in this one is fleshed out in Fair. Contains Spoilers.


Tight-laced panic and creeping cold were the last things she remembered, and the first things to greet her when sensation returned, and she couldn't even move to fight it, found even drawing breath a battle as burning chill prickled over numbed limbs, light and color flooding her vision too fast to process.

What she _could_ process was a voice, close and far away at once, and she blinked and coughed and tried to focus on that.

It was calling to her through the dizzying sweeps of light and color from the emergency vehicles, and she almost thought she saw five figures looking down on her before she finally focused on the paramedic's face and question.

Name. They wanted her name.

"Abigail Callaghan."

The five figures were gone and the paramedic wanted her full attention; she coughed again and tried to focus, and the burning chill gave way to a more earnest burn of pins and needles over her body, and she rasped out answers to their questions as she struggled to make sense of what had gone wrong.

* * *

><p>True clarity came days later.<p>

She remembered seeing Krei - unusually somber, offering unusually gentle - unusually sincere - apologies. She heard later he was the one paying her medical bills, and his failure to mention that himself was unusual too.

What shook her to clarity was five figures she'd seen in a dozen hazy dreams. She closed her eyes tight and reopened them; they were real this time, and she realized they were talking softly.

"You," she muttered after a moment, and unlike those dreams they turned toward her in response as their outlines cleared. "It was you."

"Yeah, we totally saved you!" one of them blurted eagerly. A dark-blond man, unkempt and enthusiatic and beaming at her as she blinked clouds from her vision. "Well Hiro and Baymax did but we were there and we helped with-"

"Fred, shut up." The new speaker was a Korean woman, voice low-toned and exasperated and the purple stripe in her hair hard to look at through memories of the portal.

"Right. Sorry." The blond man grinned at her, warming her back to the present, and Abigail smiled tentatively as she took in the rest of the group, finally settling on a wide-eyed boy she couldn't help notice was considerably younger than his friends.

"So. You'd be Hiro, huh." He nodded, and she smiled a bit. "Which is Baymax?"

The boy's face fell, brown eyes brimming with tears. Abigail noticed further tears on his cheeks, dried now, and would've kicked herself if she could move well enough.

"There... used to be six of us," the other woman - blonde, a hint of a maybe-Spanish accent - said quietly, and Abigail felt there was more to the statement than she currently realized but didn't dare ask further questions.

Instead, she took a slow breath, focusing on Hiro.

"Well. I... thanks. I'm sorry... but thanks."

He smiled slightly - a sweet and tentative smile, somber about the eyes - and his voice was rough when he spoke.

"I'm not. And I think... I know... he's... he's not either."

She nodded, unsure what to say, and was torn between regret and relief when an orderly came to tell them it was time to leave.

* * *

><p>The next time she saw Hiro he was alone, peeking in as she sat on the edge of the bed. She'd stood a few times, with help; pain always flared in her joints, her legs and feet numbing at inopportune times, and a visitor was a welcome respite from the specter of physical therapy.<p>

"Hey."

She raised a hand to wave, ignoring the twinges scattering through the limb, and he smiled as he came in.

"Hey, Miss Callaghan."

"Abigail's fine. Or just Abby."

"Right, right." He cleared his throat. "I... I brought you something." He held out what looked like a game controller; she took it, clumsy fingers fiddling with the buttons, and it slid apart to reveal a screen. Hiro gave that same somber-sweet smile, pleased she'd opened it so easily. "It's uh... a game. Your... I was told... I heard you liked bot fighting. I used to do it too, before I started going to SFIT, so I uh... I coded a little game... it's not much, but you can keep busy..."

"Wow." She switched it on, the screen lighting as tinny music poured from small speakers. "Is that... the Ice Cream Mountain theme?"

"Yeah, Sugar Rush." His smile was a bit wider now, softening the sleepless rings about his eyes. "Maybe once you're outta here we can play that too, I know an arcade that has an old machine."

"Yeah?" She blinked as she realized what he'd said. "Wait. You're... an SFIT student?" She gave a small, amazed huff as he nodded. "Do you know my dad?" Unlikely he didn't; her father would love this kid.

"Yeah." His smile had faltered again, a distressed squinch in his eyes, and he started turning something over in his hands. A green card, flashes of neat handwriting just visible on its surface as he fidgeted. "Y-yeah, I... we've... met."

She chewed her lip as she surveyed her game screen. Her father hadn't come to visit and Hiro wasn't the first to stumble at the question; still, she wasn't ready to press the kid, and instead glanced back at his card.

"Oh. Well, um... what've you got there?"

He stopped fidgeting, holding it close to his heart like a talisman and giving her a brittle-but-peaceful trace of that smile.

"Baymax. It's Baymax." He caught her baffled stare and started fidgeting again. "He's... my big brother built him. Tadashi. And look, he was able to send his chip out with us, so..."

"I get it." She grinned, and his smile grew a bit. "So... by the way... the doctors say 'no one knows' who got me out... and they still don't, just so you know."

"Yeah, my aunt would probably freak." He nodded a little. "Thanks."

She nodded in return as she settled back to try out the game.

"Hey, I've read comics, I know how it goes. Least I could do."

* * *

><p>Her first act upon leaving the hospital was to visit her father.<p>

When her lucid periods had stretched into hours and she could hobble around on a walker a hospital counselor had finally told her just why Robert Callaghan hadn't visited, and she had curled into sterile sheets and cried as Hiro's brittle smile and his friends' hesitant voices and the way her father had embraced her before she boarded the pod flooded her mind.

There used to be six of them, and then there were five because of her father, and then six, and then five again because of her, and even when there were six again and a soft white robot was speaking to her in a gently cheerful buzz it wasn't okay, and it hadn't been in her to speak up when Hiro's visits had slowly died off. Wasabi still came by with homemade food and Honey with pretty scarves and accessories, Fred with comics and Gogo just to sit quietly. But Hiro... Hiro had finally stopped coming altogether, and looking into her father's eyes she understood why.

He was thinner than she remembered, but he still smiled as pleasantly as if she hadn't been facing the people he'd tried to murder scant weeks ago.

She found herself smiling back - she _was_ happy to see him, he was her father and she loved him - but she also found herself shaking with anger or sorrow or maybe both.

"Dad," she said at last, and she was proud of how steady her voice was.

"Hello, Abi-girl." No change in his voice; he was pretending none of it had happened, that they weren't in a harshly lit visitation room and there was no guard or upcoming trial or dead boy hanging over them. "Sorry I couldn't make it out before."

As if he'd merely been busy at the school.

"Your students have been keeping me company."

He winced at that; she wasn't sure what she might have said if he didn't.

"Abigail..."

"What was your plan?" she asked softly. "Toss Krei in, kill him and, what, all six of them too? Then what?" He looked away, and she scowled, voice not quite raising but nearly breaking under the strain of her words. "Follow us in? Was that it?"

He was silent a long moment.

"Abigail, please... after what Krei did-"

"Accident. Everything was monitored, within safely tested parameters-"

"_Not tested enough_!"

She jumped at his shout and he immediately turned meek again, pleading.

"I was... you're everything to me, haven't I told you that before?"

He slumped in his chair, gazing wearily at her. She thought of weekends watching him work and merry nights watching movies with takeout and Hiro Hamada's tired too-wise eyes and felt ill.

"Tadashi Hamada was everything to his little brother," she said at last. "Look where you are and where he is."

She stood, and he half-reached toward her.

"Abi-"

"Bye, Dad."

She saw him set his jaw and furrow his brow, shutting out her finality like he had when she started botfighting and joined the Air Force and went to work for Krei, and she turned and walked out before he could form a sentence.

She wasn't sure just _how_ final this goodbye was, but for today it was final enough.

* * *

><p>She moved into an apartment on Krei's dime, and when he asked her if she needed anything she asked only for a piece of Silent Sparrow's hull; she was tempted to ask if she still had a job and knew he wouldn't say no, but she wasn't sure whether she wanted it for her own sake or to spite her father and until she <em>was<em> sure asking felt wrong.

She kept her therapy appointments and graduated from walker to cane; she was improving, though sometimes colors were too bright and flashes sparked at the edge of her vision and often pain or numbness or both rippled through her and probably always would, and she promised herself she would fly again even in the face of the doctors' uncertainty.

She'd be good as new, even if it was a slightly different 'new' from before.

Hiro's friends gathered her into their fold and she was desperately grateful for their friendly faces and the occasional evening at the Lucky Cat Cafe, and if Hiro himself was a bit awkward with her who could blame him?

She could tell he was trying; in return, she kept their short conversations steered away from the circumstances of their meeting with offers to help test new gear, teasing about their inevitable Sugar Rush showdown, and questions about his schoolwork or about Baymax (she knew robots to a degree, but there was something arresting and unfathomable in the subtle way his tones rose and fell, the way he ruffled Hiro's hair, the way he waddled curiously after drifting fall leaves).

She tried not to be too hurt whenever the awkwardness became too much for him.

And her heart broke all over again when she came into the lab to hear him crying at the unfairness of it all in Baymax's arms, the other four freezing at the sight of her. He flinched under her hand when she reached out to him, and she nearly flinched at the guilt in his gaze when he turned to her.

All she could do was meet his pleas with reassurance; it was clumsy and rambling but something in it tickled him and she was rewarded with the first real, broad grin she'd seen from him, and they mirrored each other's relief as he calmed.

It was a small victory, and she settled contentedly in with the other four as Baymax took the boy off to rest.

* * *

><p>A few days later Hiro sought her for the first time since she was released, Baymax in his wake as always, bursting with the energy she'd sometimes seen at a distance and the rings about his eyes faded as he grinned up at her.<p>

"Hey Abby! Hey - were you serious about testing?"

He was still tentative, but there was a certain mischief in that grin too and she couldn't help but return it.

"I'm always serious about crazy science shenanigans. And like I said, I know you'll be extra-super-careful."

He nodded.

"The superest. And you were serious about Candlehead?"

"I'm even more serious about that than science shenanigans."

"Good." He crossed his arms, leaning back. "Sources tell me she's on the roster at that place I mentioned today."

"I called for him," Baymax said. "They have his favorite as well."

"Baymax, you're kind of destroying my air of mystery here. Anyway, we'll consider a few races your, uh, tester test..."

"But he will let you test even if you do not win."

"Baymax, buddy, you're killing me."

He clambered onto the robot as if he could silence him; Baymax leaned toward Abigail, voice hushed.

"That's an _expression_."

She choked back laughter and tried to respond seriously, then gave up and whooped as Hiro slipped and Baymax nonchalantly caught and held him by an ankle as he flailed helplessly.

"All right, all right!" she managed through her giggles, "that's an offer I can't refuse! So, are we going now?"

Hiro nodded as Baymax righted him and set him on his feet with exaggerated care.

"_Right_ now. C'mon."

She felt more relaxed than she had since before the portal as she followed the strange pair, and more herself as they spent an afternoon racing and betting gummibears on ski ball games and laughing as Hiro tried to teach Baymax how to play a dancing game the robot had become enthralled with.

And even when the arcade's flash and color gave her headaches and they had to head out for quieter entertainment, Abigail Callaghan felt good as new.


End file.
